the distro-hopping rabbithole
My history with linux and distro-hopping.
the beginning
I got my first personal laptop back in 2021, an ASUS TUF F15 with an Nvidia GTX 1650 mobile GPU. It came with Windows 11 pre-installed, which was great for gaming. I was content, using it occasionally for programming, mainly for college assignments. However, I soon realized how challenging the development experience was on Windows. I struggled with getting tools like GCC, Anaconda, and others to work smoothly on my machine.
wsl2
After some research, I discovered WSL2, which was relatively new at the time. I installed Ubuntu 20.04 LTS and was amazed by how much better the development experience was with WSL2 and VSCode. However, it was frustratingly slow. Running GUI apps was a struggle, and overall, I was a bit disappointed.
Kali
All my college peers who loved to show off were using Kali Linux, so I decided to give it a try. Kali is undeniably cool, and I experimented with a persistent USB setup. However, I quickly realized it wasn’t ideal as a daily driver. It had too many tools I didn’t use or need.
Manjaro
A quick Google search for “Best Linux distro” led me to Arch Linux. However, at the time, Arch had a reputation for being one of the hardest distros to install. Intimidated by the traditional installation process, and needing to keep Windows for gaming and as a fallback, I decided to try Manjaro Linux instead. It was beginner-friendly, and I liked the Pamac manager, but I still felt like I was missing something.
arch: ALG
Using Manjaro made me realize I should try raw Arch Linux. I found Arch Linux GUI (ALG), which came with the Calamares installer. I installed the Plasma flavor and was extremely happy with the experience. The learning curve was steep, but I was eager to learn. Pacman, yay—everything made sense.
My first Arch setup
I explored different desktop environments, GTK themes, and window managers and was really content with my setup. I used this setup as my daily driver for over a year.
Fedora
While using Arch Linux, I started having issues with my Wi-Fi card. I tried various solutions, but nothing worked. Frustrated, I decided to try Fedora (also because Linus Torvalds uses it, lol). I didn’t like Fedora at all. It felt basic, and the Wi-Fi issue persisted. However, I did manage to rice my GNOME setup and used it for a week or two.
My GNOME rice
arch: traditional
It was time to return to Arch Linux, but this time, I did a CLI installation—the way it’s supposed to be done. I chose GNOME again, thanks to my experience with Fedora. I riced it and used it for another year. During this time, I even created my own GTK theme, Cosmos, inspired by the Ayu color palette. Getting touchpad gestures and Nvidia drivers to work was a pain, and Wayland was challenging, especially with basic features like screen sharing.
I dove deep into the ricing rabbit hole and fell in love with r/unixporn. I even tried out tiling window managers but found them too complicated at the time. This setup was my daily driver for two years, and I used this setup for my full-time job as well.
Some of my favourite rices:
Pop!_OS
I tried Pop!_OS for a day or two, but it didn’t stand out. It was basic, and I quickly reverted to Arch. Although I liked Cosmic, it wasn’t much different from GNOME at that time. However, with the recent activity around the Cosmic project, I’m looking forward to giving it another try soon.
NixOS
After using Arch for almost three years, I realized it wasn’t as stable as I needed. Although I could proudly say “I use Arch, btw,” the latest packages often broke, especially the desktop environment, the mirrors were not as reliable and falling back was not was straightforward. Then I discovered NixOS and was impressed by the concept—one configuration and easy reproducibility. I formatted my Linux drive and installed NixOS using the Calamares installer. Although the installation felt a bit lackluster, I’m really enjoying NixOS. With NixOS, I finally switched to a tiling window manager (Hyprland) and am actively ricing it. Installing packages using a config file didn’t feel intuitive at first, but it has quickly grown on me. The learning curve is steep, and am still not fully comfortable with the home manager.
My NixOS-Hyprland rice
I’m not completely satisfied with the rice, but my curiosity keeps me going. I’ll be updating my dotfiles here (Work in Progress).
Although arch holds a special place in my heart, and things are better, easier installation with archinstall and overall better community support, I think it’s time for me to try something new.
closing thoughts
I recently bought a MacBook, which has taken up most of my time due to my day job. Despite the shift in my daily workflow, I still find moments to revisit my Linux setup whenever I can. When the MacBook closes, the Linux environment opens, allowing me to continue exploring and tinkering outside of work. Although it sometimes comes handy when I need to try my rust binaries in x86_64, where I ssh into my machine and quickly test/write rust. The journey isn’t over—let’s see where it leads next.
